Clearly. transferring people from Hong Kong camps to Vietnamese ones is no solution. it ignores the reasons people fled in the first place. For two years I worked in Hong Kongs Whitehead Detention Center. population 24.000. I spoke with hundreds of Vietnamese desperate for help in obtaining refugee status. These people realize that only a small percentage will be granted refugee status and the chance to resettle. Still. they prefer a bleak future in Hong Kongs detention centers to going back. The boat people consider the refugeescreening process biased. cursory and a violation of internationally accepted judicial norms. Amnesty International and the Lawyors Committee for Human Rights agree. Asia Watch recently documented the cases of individuals who had been persecuted for their leadership in human rights activities in Vietnam. yet as boat people in Hong Kong had been denied refugee status. The camps screening questionnaire is concerned with only the applicants immediate family. while the biodata questionnaires used by Vietnamese authorities in applications for education and employment ask about family activities as far back as the French colonial period. before 1954. Discrimination in employment and education is still the norm for individuals whose parents or grandparents were associated with the French. or with the Americans.
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refugee refugeescreening